Book: The Freebooters of the Wilderness

A >> Agnes C. Laut >> The Freebooters of the Wilderness




And, of course, the transcontinental was late. When was it not late,
when you were in a hurry?

"How late?"

"Four hours, last report," the operator answered.

She sent her suit case across to the hotel, and shopped, and loitered
up and down the platform. It was not until afterwards she remembered
one of the loafer brigade dangling legs from the station platform
looking over his shoulder with an evil smile.

"Say--d' y' see the evening paper?" he had asked. "That's her;" and
there was a laugh that somehow sent her back inside the station feeling
vaguely uneasy.

"I think I'll telephone them up at the Ranch not to keep dinner
waiting," she said to the operator.

He was reading the paper. He looked at her a moment before answering.
If a human face could have been expressed in a punctuation mark, that
agent's face should have been drawn in a big question mark, with the
eyes put somewhere in the hook, and the neck growing longer and longer
as he looked.

"Public telephone right across the road," he said.

In avoidance of the loafers' looks, she had walked unheeding straight
into the Senator's office. Her first instinct was to withdraw. Then,
she saw Brydges; and that curious sensation of repulsion obsessed her.
She literally shot the handy man in full retreat with one glance.
Then, the joy of the ride down, the heroism of the driver, came back.
Perhaps it was the jar of roses, but the thought came what if _she_
could find that vein of heroism in the Senator. When women risk their
souls on that "if" and the souls of friends and children; is it vanity,
I wonder, or is it the will o' the wisp light that lights erring feet
to darkness?

She thought more highly of the Senator that he did not offer to shake
hands, just as most of us would think more highly of Judas Iscariot if
he had not kissed Christ. Being a Westerner, she had the Westerner's
horror of a maverick sporting the brand of a thoroughbred. The Senator
took off his glasses and sat tapping them above the U. S. Geological
Survey map.

"I trust," he began, "that my man expressed to you my deep regret--my
deep distress over--"

"Don't . . . please, don't," interrupted Eleanor, with a passionate
break in her voice. "I know you are honest, Senator Moyese, honest to
what you believe is right; and I don't want you to feel that you have
to lie because I am a woman."

The Senator opened his mouth, took a breath, and shut it again.

She understood him well enough to know that if he had to toy with his
glasses for a twelve month, he would wait for her to play down first.
Yet she recognized the instinct of his manhood to rescue the confusion
of her embarrassment when he put forward his hand casually and
said--"See my roses, Miss Eleanor? They are a new variety of American
Beauties. See, each petal has a white veining? Know how those roses
are produced? Ages and ages of poor trash worthless common roses have
been sacrificed to produce this perfect type."

"That's your theory of life, isn't it?" she asked, vaguely conscious
that the dragon was disarming her anger.

"Isn't it nature's?" asked Moyese gently. "The fit survive because
they are fit; the exceptional; the few; while the worthless go to
waste?"

Before Eleanor realized, she had lost all consciousness of self and was
pleading passionately leaning forward across the desk.

"Isn't Christ's theory better, Senator, to make all the unfit into fit?
Isn't Christ's theory the theory of science? Science aims to make a
whole field of perfect corn; not just one perfect cob. I know that;
for I read it in your speech at the opening of the Agricultural
College. If we keep on sacrificing the interests of the many to the
interests of the few, aren't we working back to savagery, Senator?"

The Senator drew the finest of the roses from the jar. "It's a matter
of taste, perhaps, Miss Eleanor; but I prefer this to a whole jarful of
scrubs."

"Then you are not working for democracy. It's just as Mrs. Williams
says, all you foreign multimillionaires are subverting our Nation by
working for old fashioned despotism in disguise; sacrificing the many
to the few."

"Oh, does Mrs. Williams say that?" asked Moyese reflectively, pushing
back from the desk and clasping his hands round one knee. "That may
be; republicanism doesn't necessarily mean letting the blockheads rule!
It may mean giving equal opportunity for the fit men to come to the top
and rule. Did you come in to talk over these things with me, Miss
Eleanor? I must make a convert of you; it would win over Wayland and
Williams and your father."

"No, I didn't. I came in here by mistake. The operator told me I'd
find a public telephone across the road; and I wasn't noticing where I
was going, and I came in here; but all the way down, I had been
thinking of you, Senator Moyese. I kept thinking if you could only be
made to see the New Day that is dawning, perhaps you would meet it half
way. I rode in the driver's seat coming down; and he told me how he
lost his arm; Senator, think of the hero in him?"

"And you thought there might be some of the hero in me, too?" Moyese
laughed, the noiseless genial laugh creasing his chin and his white
vest.

"While you laugh, you are letting your rose wither."

He handed the rose to her. "Yes, I know that fellow. I was in the
Kootenay when he lost his arm, torn out all bloody right from the
shoulder socket; had to pry the cogs up to get him out. They collected
a purse of a thousand for him; but he wouldn't take a cent: handed it
over to the hospital. Something in that fellow bigger than self kind
of popped out and surprised himself."

She noticed him looking at the wall clock as he talked, but not being a
business woman did not know what that meant.

"There's something bigger than self with us all, Senator; and we have
to work for it."

"My dear child, do you think you need to tell an old stager that?" He
was kicking the creases out of his trousers. This time, she could not
mistake the signal, and felt her womanish idealism of mining for the
hidden vein of heroism both childish and cheapening. She rose and
placed the flower back on the desk.

"There's something bigger than you or me, my dear," he went on,
"something for which every man worth his salt must work and fight, and
which a woman does not understand."

"And that is?"

"His party," said Moyese.

"But Senator, there is something bigger than party, and if a man works
against That, he'll injure his party."

"And that is?"

"His Nation," said the girl.

Moyese gave her a quick sharp look that was not unkindly. In fact,
Eleanor could read that it was lonely, irritated, isolated.

"My dear," he said, coming round where she stood, "we differ on
fundamentals. The whole nation to-day is divided on fundamentals. I'm
no mealy mouth to curse plutocracy in order to please the mob.
Plutocracy fills the workman's dinner pail and keeps the mills going
and opens the mines and builds the railroads. Mobocracy, your grubby
corn cob and trashy roses, that, what does it do? Mouthe and mouthe
and try to pull down what is above it! It will have to be fought out!
No? It will not be another French Revolution! _Our bullets are
ballots, nowadays_; and the American people get exactly the form of
Government which they want. If they want another form, it remains with
them to fight for it. The umpire of all is fact--Miss Eleanor; and the
facts of each side will have to be fought out; the better man will win;
be sure of that! _The facts that are facts not fictions will win, with
ballots for bullets_. For my part, I'll not dodge the issue; and I
hope you'll not think me any the less of the hero for that?"

He had extended his hand as he talked, and to her surprise, she found
herself taking it when with a wave of revulsion, the memory of the
Ridge and the Rim Rocks came back.

"And government is a mere game of politics?" she said. "And politics
resolves itself into brute force; and a murder more or less doesn't
matter? Fordie, I suppose, would be classed as one of the scrubs
sacrificed for this perfection of party?"

His hand dropped hers as if she had struck him.

"You did not know that you were overheard? 'See that no harm comes to
the boy.' You did not mean Fordie to be murdered; but they were to
crowd the sheep over 'to beat Hell,' 'the sheep were to go it
blind'--my father's and Mr. Williams' property was to be sacrificed to
build up the fortune of the cattle barons: they too, I suppose, are
scrubs sacrificed among the many for the wealth of the one, who happens
to be yourself. You broke the law; but because you did not order
Fordie's murder, you think the blood guiltiness from that broken law
does not rest upon you. You say it must all be fought out. You force
the fight--"

He raised his hand to stop her. She remembered afterwards how ashy
white and aged his face became. He walked to the door and opened it.
She passed out. So that was to what her womanish mining for the vein
of the ideal heroism had led. She had been politely shown out. It was
as Wayland had said: there was no middle course; and it was also as the
Senator had said, it must be fought out, and the bullets were to be
ballots.

The Senator slammed his door shut and snapped the yale lock. Then he
noticed the rose she had left, and tossed it in the spittoon.

"Thank God," he ejaculated fervently as he sank back in the swing
chair, "_Thank God women are not in politics. There is always
something to be thankful for_."

Then, an idea seemed to strike him. He rang the telephone with fury,
and it didn't improve his temper to hear the saucy little central
informing her elbow mate that "that ol' fellah wuz burnin' the wire up
alive."

"Is that 'The Herald'? Brydges there? That you, Brydges? Listen, the
night you were up on the Ridge, have you any perfect proof that Wayland
didn't go down when you were asleep? Eh? You turned in at ten; and
you found him still stamping about at twelve? Is that it? What? No?
Don't be a damphool, _cut that out_. Of course, he didn't go down to
the Ranch House. Cut that whole scandal thing out. There's nothing in
it; but I think we can locate our missing knight errant. Understand?
He's got to be smashed? What? _You had printed the scandal story
before you ever came in to me at all_? Dictated it right in to the
typo machines? In the 'Independent'? Oh, well, I'm glad it didn't go
in the 'City Herald'? But it did go in; one evening paper?" Then the
wrath of the strong man broke bounds. If he had been a stage villain
the curtain drop would have fallen on a red faced gentleman pounding
the desk, tearing at the telephone, hurling his chair about the office
and generally, as the saucy little central remarked, "eating the wire
up alive."


When Brydges' chief indulged in explosives that necessitated the repair
of furniture the next day, the handy man always stood strictly and
silently at attention. He knew the meaning of the stage thunder: it
was the trick of the Indian medicine man, who fires guns to bring down
rain. Bat knew that the fulminations were of a piece with all the
other orders to do and not to do, an effort to get results while
diverting the thunderbolt from the rain maker's head; for by one of
those strange contingencies that Shakespeare defines as an opportunity
of evil, when the handy man had gone to the 'Herald,' the news editor
chanced to be out. Bat crossed to the 'Independent's' office. It
lacked but half an hour of the time to lock up the press, and on
condition that the story should be "a scoop," Bat was sent out to the
composing room to dictate straight to the printer, standing over the
linotype machine.

What was "the story" that he dictated? If you know where to look, you
can see its prototype seven times a week. It was written jocularly;
oh, it was exceedingly funny with all sorts of veiled references to
naughtiness that couldn't be printed, pretty naughtiness, you
understand, the kind you wink at, as was to be expected from a little
beauty, a brunette, chic, etc. (I forget how many French words Bat
tucked in: he had to look 'em up in the French-English appendix to
Webster's Dictionary as the proof came off the galley), the well known
daughter of the richest sheep rancher in the Valley. "The story" was
headed: "Pretty Scandal in Peaceful Valley." Bat played "the human
interest" feature for all it was worth; also the trick of suspended
interest. It began by informing the public that a pretty scandal was
disturbing a certain Valley not a hundred miles from the Rim Rocks, the
essential details of which could not be given, would probably _never_
be printed, for obvious reasons. Then followed a solid paragraph of
nonsense verse inserted as prose; about a Ranger-man, Ranger-man,
running away, 'Cause pa-pah, dear pa-pah comes home for to-day; But his
Lincoln green coatie the Ranger forgot; And pa-pah, dear pa-pah came
home raging hot; The Ranger-man, Ranger-man was still on the run, For
pa-pah, dear pa-pah was out with a gun, He'd heaved up his war club and
jangled his spear, And swore by my halidom what doth that coat here,
etc., etc. Any school boy could have trolled off yards of the same
drivelling cleverness; and Eleanor's innocent telephone call was, of
course, lugged in.

There followed a garbled account of poor Calamity's errant days among
the miners of the Black Hills. The account had no reference to her
heroism in the early mining days, when she roved in man's attire over
the hills to rescue wounded miners from the Sioux. It set forth only
her blazoning sins; evidently on the assumption that carrion is
preferable to meat. And then tucked ingeniously into this account was
veiled mention of a rich sheepman, too well known to need naming, who
was evidently making reparation for the errors of his youth by
according to the mother as good treatment as the daughter under the
same roof. Not a name was mentioned except Calamity's. I trust it is
obvious to you that it was not libelous, because it was without malice.
In fact, if you want to know the ear marks of a handy man's "story,"
look out for the smart gentlemen in veiled references without any facts
which can be transfixed by either a pin or a handspike. When you find
the innuendo without the handhold of fact, lick your lips if you are
keen on carrion; for I promise that you have come on a morsel.

Bat did even better than the clever story dictated straight to the typo
in the composing room. Always in the West, there flit in and out what
we Westerners used to call "floaters," gentlemen (and ladies) who come
in on a pullman car and go out on a pullman car and sometimes venture
as far away from safety as a hotel rotunda, then syndicate their
impressions of the West, in the East, and gravely correct twenty year
Westerners with twenty minute impressions. I don't believe on the
whole, as Westerners, we like them very much; but obviously, one
doesn't kill a mosquito with a hammer.

Bat caught such a floater on the delayed transcontinental express. He
was seeing the West through a car window. The East will not see the
jocularity of that fact. The West will, though it may smile with a
twist. Bat's floater was working for a Chicago boomster, who had
issued a magazine to boom Western real estate, suburban lots seven
miles from a flat car, which was all there was of the city. For
exactly fifteen dollars (when the floater's impressions came out, I
made exact inquiries as to what Bat had paid him; and it seemed to me
that floater sold himself very cheap) the travelling impressionist took
over Bat's story of "the Pretty Scandal in Peaceful Valley" and
rehashed it with the name MacDonald given as Macdonel, and syndicated
the scandal against the Forest Service throughout the East.


The transcontinental express had made up lost time and came roaring in
just as the stage rattled up to the platform. MacDonald and Williams
stepped off the observation car. Eleanor shook hands.

"You know about the sheep?" she asked.

"Yes, we have your letter," answered MacDonald. "That's why we stayed
so long buying grazing ground in the Upper Pass."

"Here, boy." He bought an evening paper; and helped Eleanor inside the
stage. Then he mounted to the top with Williams. There were only
three other occupants in the stage, the lady of the lavender silks, the
gold teeth, and a workman, sodden drunk and drowsy, in the upper
corner. The lady of the lavender silks had a complexion that looked as
if it had been dipped in a fountain of perennial youth. She was
leaning over the evening paper which the undertaker plumes had
evidently shown her. The heat had not improved Eleanor's stiff linen
collar and the dust had certainly not added to the style of her kakhi
motor coat. It was not until afterwards she remembered how both the
heads flew apart from the evening paper the moment she entered the
stage.

"Have you had a pleasant day shopping, my dear?" It was the lavender
silk with the hard mouth actually breaking in a smile. It was the "my
dear" that struck Eleanor's ear as odd. The manner said plainly as
words could say "You weren't before; but you _are_ now."

"Oh, it was rather hot," answered Eleanor quietly.

"Y're on the wrong soide. Y're in the sun. If y'll sit over b'side
off me, my dear gurl--"

Eleanor nearly exploded. 'Girl' was the limit: 'lady' would have been
worse; 'woman' was good enough for her; but, 'gurl.' It was the
manner, the proprietary manner, you are one of us _now_: what had
happened? She did not answer. She raised her eye lashes and looked
the speaker over from the undertaker's plumes and the gold teeth and
the ash colored V of skin to the clock-work stockings and high heeled
slippers. Then, the stage was stopping violently and her father
appeared on the rear steps at the door. She had never seen him look
so. His eyes were blazing. It was not until afterwards she remembered
how the lavender silks had crushed the evening paper all up and sat
upon it.

"There is a little girl up on the seat with the driver. You'll find it
pleasanter there going up the Valley."

She remembered afterwards, while her father gave her a hand up the
front wheel, a voice inside the stage exclaimed: "Say, thought they wuz
goin' to be fireworks. If Dan'd read that in th' paper 'bout me, he'd
a gone on awful."

"Oh, no, he's a thoroughbred all right, if it is part Indian."

Then her father and Williams had gone down inside the stage; and she
was left with the driver and a diminutive little bit of humanity, that
looked as if it had escaped from one of the rag shops of Shanty Town.
She wore a tawdry thing on her head with bright carmine ostrich plumes
that had lost their curl in the rain. A red plush cape was round her
shoulders; and Eleanor could hardly believe her eyes--she had not seen
them since she went through the East End of London--they were copper
toed boots.

"M' name is Meestress Leezie O'Finnigan. What's y'rs?" demanded the
little old face.

Eleanor didn't answer. She was trying to think what had changed the
driver's friendly manner. He had neither greeted her nor proffered the
reins. And now, oh, philosopher of the human heart, for each of us is
a philosopher inside, answer me: why did the driver, who was a bit of a
hero, and the lavender silk, who was an adventuress, and the gold
teeth, who was a slattern, neither pure nor simple, why did each and
all eagerly believe the evil, so vague it had not been stated, written
by an unknown blackmailer, in the face of the reputation of purity
sitting beside them?

"M' father uz down inside," continued the child. "He's sleep. We're
goin' t' live on th' Ridge. D' y' know what a Ridge iz? We're goin'
t' be waal-thy--m' father says so. He says we won't have a thing t' do
but sit toight an' whuttle un' sput, un' whuttle un' sput fur three
years, then the com'ny wull huv t' pay us what he asks. He says they
think they'll pay him off fur three hun'red; but he says he _knows_, he
does; un' he's goin' t' hold 'em up fur half. Unless they give him
half he'll tell--"

"What?" asked Eleanor, suddenly wakening up to the meaning of the
chatter. "What is your father?"

"He's trunk jes' now," said the child. Then she reached her face up to
Eleanor's confidentially. The little teeth were very unclean and the
breath was very garlicky, indeed. "He's goin' t' be a dummy," she
whispered with a gurgle of childish glee, "un' he says he'll easily
hold 'em up for twenty thousand without doin' a thing fur five years
but whuttle un' sput."

"A dummy? Oh," said Eleanor.

Even the driver relaxed enough to flick the tandem grays with his whip
and permit a twisted smile to play round the tobacco wad in his cheek.


They ate their late supper in the Ranch House by lamp light, her father
scarcely uttering a word, the evening paper still sticking out of his
coat pocket.

"I know this sheep affair has been a horrible, hideous loss," she said.
"Is that what's worrying you, father?"

MacDonald shoved back from the table.

"Pah, that's nothing," he said.

He stood waiting till the German cook had removed the dishes. Then he
drew the paper from his pocket.

"There's something here I'm sorry you'll have to know," he said. "You
won't understand how low the meaning of most of it is; but I'm sorry
they hit you to try and hurt me."

He threw himself down in a big leather chair. She took the paper
mechanically and sat on the arm of the chair to read. She read slowly
and deliberately to the end. Then she re-read both columns; and the
paper fell from her hands. She did not know it, but the same
suppressed fury was blazing in her face as she had seen on his at the
stage door.

"So that is what was doing when I went to the Senator's office this
afternoon to plead with him that things could not go on in the old
plundering way. That is what his man's visit meant here the other day
to express sympathy with you for the loss of the sheep? Now I
understand what the loafers at the station meant, and the driver's
unfriendliness, and those unclean women; and to think they framed it
all out of that innocent coat. You know, father, Mr. Wayland had
carried Fordie down from the Rim Rocks. We carried the body in
together."

"Where is Wayland?" asked MacDonald; and she poured out the full story
of all that had happened. I hope, gentle reader, you will please to
observe that if the father had viewed the facts of that recital through
the same tainted mind as Mr. Bat Brydges, a breach would have occurred
that neither time nor regret could have bridged. I confess when I see
breaches occur that wrench lives and break hearts through love
harboring suspicion, I don't think the love is very much worth the
name. You can't both have your plant grow, and keep tearing up the
roots to see if they are growing. You can't both throw mud in a spring
and drink out of a well of love undefiled. If love grows by what it
feeds on, so does suspicion. He did not once look up questioningly to
her eyes. Instead, he reached up and took hold of her hand. For the
first time in their lives, father and daughter came together.

"But there is one thing you are mistaken about, father. They did not
hit me, to hurt you. They hit me, to stop Dick Wayland."

"Why, what difference can you make to Wayland?"

She hid her face on his shoulder.

"I love him," she said.


When the German cook came in with the washed dishes, father and
daughter still sat in the big arm chair; and you may depend on it, that
flunky carried out to the ranch hands, guzzling over the evening paper
in the bunk house, a proper report of a heart broken father and a
repentant daughter; for when we look out on the world, do we see the
world at all; or do we see the shadows of our own inner souls cast out
on the passing things of life?




CHAPTER XX

A FAITH WORKABLE FOR MEN ON THE JOB

"The point is," said Wayland, "though, we have driven out this nest of
beauties, we have no guarantee another nest won't take their place; and
so we're not much farther ahead than before, with the chances I'll be
called down for exceeding my duties."

"And y'll keep on bein' where y' were before till y' get the Man Higher
Up," interrupted Matthews.

They had camped among the red firs where the Desert crossed the State
Line and merged from cut rocks to broken timber. It was seven weeks
since they had set out from the Upper Mesas of the Rim Rocks, four
weeks since they had left the saline pool. Man and beast, fagged to
the point of utter exhaustion, retraced steps slower than fresh hunters
on an untried trail. Also, going down, they had followed hard wherever
fugitives led. Coming back, they struck across to the Western Desert
road, and travelled from belt to belt of the irrigation farms, with
their orange-green cottonwood groves and bluish-green alfalfa fields
and little match box houses stuck out of sight among peach orchards.
The parched-earth, burnt-oil smell gave place to the minty odor of hay
in wind rows, with the cool water tang of the big irrigation ditch
flowing liquid gold in the yellow August light. One evening, Matthews
looked back to the looming heat waving and writhing above the orange
sands beneath a sky of lilac and topaz round a sunset flowing from a
dull red ball of fire. Far ahead, the edges of forested mountain cut
the heat haze with opal winged light above what might have been peaks
or clouds.

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